


If Not You

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [64]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Superman (Comics)
Genre: Earth-3, Friendship, Gen, Mirror Universe, Politics, President Luthor, genius billionaires and their power armor, meddling clown, post-Injustice War, the power-freedom-responsibility triangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-13 05:32:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18934462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: Sometimes, as Alexander Luthor very well knows, the reward for a difficult job acceptably done is another, harder job. With even more lives on the line. And an ever-escalating quantity of paperwork.





	If Not You

**Author's Note:**

> This was the second installment of this 'verse to ever be published, after 'The Owl And the Dead Boy,' on ffdotnet in 2014. 
> 
> I've had some requests to crosspost it, so I am, but note that the narration may seem a little weird because it was written from a perspective of this being the first the reader had ever seen of this version of these characters, and while I've made some small edits I didn't attempt to rewrite the thing.

"Why _me?_ " Alexander Luthor grumbled, soldering a broken connection in his favorite power armor. Every single suit he'd ever built was currently trashed. War had left very little time for maintenance and repair. "I didn't do more than anybody else."

A loud, snorting laugh burst out behind him, from a man in a bright green suit who'd spent half the afternoon perched on his lab counter. Like someone with no responsibilities. "Easy, Lexy," his friend said, voice packed full of grin. "They need a symbol. Somebody leader-like. Who everybody already _knows_. I'm too weird-looking and crazy and criminal, Grod's not human enough, Bob's an alien clone and ugly as sin, al Ghul and Ducard are foreign…"

Alex snorted behind his welding mask. "You can be so cynical for an idealist."

"Part of my charm. I love people, but I'm not going to pretend they're not _stupid_ a lot of the time. Sometimes even crazy!"

"And item one on the crazy meter, they're calling for me to be President."

"Well, Wilson's already had his two terms, and after the last six months, you can see how they want somebody hard to assassinate."

Alex grabbed another length of wire. "Oh, _that_ makes the job sound appealing. You know how much work it is? How would I ever get anything done?"

"I'm sure the POTUS can block off _some_ lab time."

"During a state of national emergency," Alex snorted. "Oh, certainly."

Jokester watched him work in silence for a minute or so. "Somebody needs to do it, Lex," he said, more solemnly than anyone usually ever heard him speak.

Alex groaned. "And if not me, then who? Is that the idea?" He shut off the soldering iron, set it aside, and pushed the mask up so he could fix that flour-white face with a sour look. "And stop calling me that."

"It's alliterative. The press loves it." Gotham City's foremost hero cracked his knuckles. "Come on, Science Boy. We'll be behind you all the way."

"Catcalling and jostling and complaining every time I fail to veto a law you don't like, I know."

The clown shrugged, unapologetic, grinning hard once again. "Equality is hard to get right. I trust you a whole lot more than anyone else who could take the job." The  _could_ was the important thing there, Alex felt. He had a platform, a public record of successes, _administrative experience_ even if it was all corporate...

"If you don't think you deserve the _honor_ of it, you're wrong." Jokester leaned forward, not solemn now but terribly  sincere. "Come on, Alex. This is your biggest chance to make a difference _ever._ "

The inventor sighed. Here they stood, at the crossroads of history, with the wreckage of the past still cooling on some battlefields, and the future uncertain. "I'll do it, J. You know I will."

He pulled off the welding mask entirely and set it aside, closing the panel on the half-mended exosuit. Rubbed a hand over his head, as though smoothing hair that wasn't there. He smiled, and it wasn't quite wry, or quite melancholy, but it wasn't a simple expression either. "Do you think they'd still elect me if I picked Bob as my running mate?"

"I think there's a thirty percent chance they'd elect you if it meant the VP would be a one-eyed tomcat," Jokester snickered, flipping a flathead screwdriver end over end in one hand, as though prepared to throw it at any threats that presented themselves.

Or perhaps that was Alex's own hypervigilance speaking, and Jokester was just juggling. "Never mind _Bob_. He was pretty visibly central to the fight against Ultraman. They might go for it! He _was_ made in the US, so if he counts as a person at all, he's eligible for the Presidency. Not sure he'd want the job, though."

"Probably not," Alex admitted. "Last I heard he was in Hawaii. He says he's trying to be a real person. At least, that was what I got; his reversed way of speaking can be tricky. He might be trying to 'be true to himself.'"

"Aren't we all," his most irrepressible friend murmured. Smiling, of course.

Alex shoved him more than necessary in the process of reclaiming his screwdriver.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh and as I occasionally remember to mention, I have a discord server specifically for yelling at me (and each other) about my fic. 😄 If you want to do that or chat more generally you can go [here](https://discord.gg/upPqKS9).


End file.
